


Never the Whole Picture

by rowofstars



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Post-Episode: s02e13 Doomsday
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2008-12-23
Updated: 2008-12-23
Packaged: 2018-04-25 12:11:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,054
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4960126
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rowofstars/pseuds/rowofstars
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In a universe that is not hers, where she resides against her will.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> A 500 word quickie and a moment in Rose's head. My first stab at a Who-fic. Comments are my crack!

_“Look at my eyes... One of them is a fake 'cause I lost it in an accident. Since then, I can see the past in one eye, and the present in the other. So I can see only patches of reality, never the whole picture."_  
\-- Spike Spiegal; Cowboy BeBop

She was never certain of the point at which the linearity of time became lost, back when life was spent drifting the universe in a chronologically challenged blue box perpetually stuck in 1955. But in her sterile office space, basked in the harsh glow of fluorescent light, the inexorable succession of minutes is too easily counted. In a universe that is not hers, where she resides against her will.

It’s just an existence, she thinks.

Living is not waking to public transportation and a meaningless job in a shop. Or chips with too much vinegar and not enough salt over the prattle of a mum who is somehow still the same even a dimension apart from where she started.

Her life is more. Was more, she corrects.

It was adventure and love and it was always that dangerous. The perfect fit of a hand, tight in hers, a Run! and the pounding of rubber soles.

That life was capsized by a brilliant plan and a slip of a handle. Planet Earth saved, Rose Tyler lost; universe one, Doctor zero. The blame is not his, though she knows he puts it all on himself. Evidently defending the cosmos comes with a closet full of mea culpas; a martyr, rude, and not ginger.

Back home, her real home; they say she died that day. The truth is far worse; she’s died everyday since, alive only in her past.

Torchwood is still a far cry from a shop, better in most respects, or so she fights to convince herself. Yet it lacks even the hint of a basement of lurking mannequin assassins and a savior in leather and denim, or a suit and tie. Her new job touches on aspects of her life before now, as she tries to reason and catalog the purpose of each alien object that litter about her workspace.

She knows he’d know.

Everyone stares at her here. Curious at the sudden appearance of a wife they thought dead and a grown daughter sharing names with the dog. There’s something just odd about the whole thing, about her, that they can’t quite place. They know her piece doesn’t quite fit the puzzle; like she bears a stamp on her forehead that says ‘misplaced’.

She wishes it said ‘return to sender’.

Some days she thinks maybe this world is okay, in the interim. A nice place to visit but wouldn’t want to live there. There’s a big house, a family complete with a new little brother and a Mickey who seems to have finally found definition apart from her. This life has everything she should want, but none of what she does need.

So she always looks back, and holds to the fragments of her afflictions; the last connections to him.

A long room, concluded in a painfully white wall, where her fingers still press in desperation across dimensions. A cold beach where tears fall over confessions left hanging in the air.

She’s still waiting for the end of a sentence.  



	2. Chapter 2

He never knows quite how to explain the ways in which time works to those who travel with him. To them time is so very linear, a beginning, middle and end; birth, life and death. He tries so very hard but it gets horribly muddled translating from his brain to his mouth. Somewhere along the line he just gave up. It was easier to just say it was a big ball of timey, whimey stuff.

It's just impossible to explain to anyone, short of another Time Lord, that time just is. There is no beginning or end for him, it's all middle. This is great when your lifespan is counted in centuries; when you get a real forever. Lousy when you're the only one who does.

She'd said forever.

Standing on a craggy, uninhabited planet sixty thousand years before her own beginning, she told him with absolute conviction that she would never leave his side. And though he knew it was a complete impossibility he believed her, because he believed in her.

He still does, he thinks.

He'd had many travel partners over the years. But she is different and special; perfect. When she holds his hand and smiles he can run for days. He knows he has never felt so much love, or had so much faith in anyone else.

But companions come and companions go and the life of the last of the Time Lords marches ever on, painfully alone. The Tardis hums in his mind, providing words of consolation; or what passes for consolation from a semi-sentient time machine. He's certain, if transcendental coral pillars could move, the Tardis would wrap them around him; trying to hug him as impossibly tight as she would.

As she never will again.

It seemed like such a brilliant plan at the time. It was as if the Daleks and Cybermen had served up the means to their own demise. The worst part is the knowledge that it's his fault, that it's always his fault. He's fairly certain that the guilt will kill him long before any demon-Slitheen-Dalek-Cyberman convolution ever can. Somewhere his mind wonders what the penance is for ripping a hole through the universe, obliterating two species and losing Rose Tyler; all in one day.

If he can just fix everything possible from here on out, then maybe when the final tally comes in he'll come out ahead. If he's really good, it might come close to making up for all he's destroyed. 

So he never looks back, never sees what he's lost, and lives only for the present; pushing bits of memories back into to a deadlocked room in his mind; the last connections to her.

A long room concluded in a painfully white wall, where he can still feel her heart, her soul, just on the other side, calling desperately for him. A cold beach where the sight of her, beautiful and safe, eases his mind even as her confession breaks his hearts.

He's still waiting for the start to forever.


End file.
